


safe house

by destinies



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, POV Second Person, Pre-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2571689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinies/pseuds/destinies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You limp on together, alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	safe house

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [Tumblr](http://chelwritesthings.tumblr.com/post/101632644643/).

            The safe house is an old house on an old street in Bruges, nestled between all of the other old houses perched on the edge of a cobblestone street. The two of you lurch up the street as one person, her arm just below your shoulder blades, yours just above her waist, and no one is out to see the way you limp, not at this time of night.

            She favors her right leg heavily. One of those bastards came at her with a knife, tried to hamstring her—nearly did, only because she was busy taking out the two guys who had their guns pointed at _you_. Stupid, stupid. She doesn’t blame you, but you blame you. She says she should have been watching out for it. Doesn’t matter now. The men who’d have killed you have bullets in their backs; the one who cut her got an arrow through the eye, and you limp on together, alive.

            The inside of the house is a relic of the eighties, with fluorescent lights that drop down from the ceiling and loud patterns on the furniture that make your head hurt. Easy to imagine S.H.I.E.L.D. agents of decades past unwinding here. There are also thick tile countertops, more functional. She braces herself against one. Her thigh still bleeds, and it’s that blood, a deep red, that drips on the floor like it dripped on the seat of the car you had to ditch a little while back. She opens her mouth, but you know what she’s going to say and it’s pigheaded so you say it instead: you’ll make sure the place is secure. She just gives you this tight little nod and starts searching for first aid supplies without acknowledging that she’s in no state to be moving around anyway. But that’s her. That’s her all over.

            Once you’ve locked down the house and touched base with S.H.I.E.L.D., you come down to the kitchen to find that she’s peeled out of her suit and boosted herself up on the countertop. She cleans the gash with hydrogen peroxide, and you’ve seen much worse but it’s still hard to look at. You don’t know that there’s anything to say, so you open the fridge to see if there’s anything to eat. You find Gatorade in there and you start laughing. She furrows her brow at you, but how do you even begin to explain that you had the flickering thought that maybe these are here because they never expire, that Gatorade, like Twinkies and Nokia phones from the ‘90s, will survive humankind and probably the inevitable destruction of the earth?

            You shake your head. You know it’s just about electrolytes and whatever, stuff you both need, so you hand her a red Gatorade and chug down a purple one. There’s something funny about that, too, but you know it’ll sound crazy to laugh again. It’s been a long day and neither of you need that kind of crazy right now.

            You use your arms to push yourself up next to her and offer to stitch her leg shut so she doesn’t have to ask you to do it. The cut is deep but not fatal. Her face is pale from blood loss, and her hands aren’t as steady as they’d normally be, but if her femoral artery had been nicked she’d be dead by now. It’ll only get better from here. You don’t need to tell her that. She sips her red Gatorade and barely winces at the prick of the needle.

            And while you hold her leg steady with one hand and stitch with the other—you are damn good at sewing when you have to be—you remember how just that morning, when you two were getting ready to go out, you saw her putting mascara on. And you’d asked her why, you know? Why she felt the need to do that before a mission, when it would probably get ruined. You don’t think it’s a looks thing, and she said it isn’t, that it’s a strategy thing. She said pretty faces disarm men, and you attested to the truth of that. Looking at her now, her forehead beaded with sweat as she stares hard at her uninjured left leg, it suddenly strikes you that you’re one of the few people who have ever seen her barefaced.

            As you tie off her stitches, as you dress the wound up with gauze and bandages, she wipes at her mouth with the back of her wrist and looks away. You ask her what’s up, and she just says, “I’m tired.” 

            And you get that. You know what it’s like to be tired. Tired is not something that only runs skin-deep but a weariness that sits heavy in your chest cavity, that weighs down the hollow spaces in your bones. You get that tired is weakness’ second cousin, the only relation she can admit to without shame.

            You put your hand on her hand, and the room is still, and the house is still, and Bruges is still, and you are the only two people left in the world, and you are breathing.


End file.
